I enjoy surfing and just being around the ocean. I recently have been satisfied with the way that black and white photos capture the texture of the sand and water and the light of the moment.
Beach life
Vernacular
I finally got around to seeing the Walker Evans exhibit at San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art. I knew of Evans images of poor farm families for the Farm Security Administration, but have seen little else. His work capturing everyday images, or the “vernacular,” connected with me. It is great to have the opportunity to travel the world and take photos of interesting places but there are so many interesting images the world presents to us every day.
The images above and below were shot with a Hasselblad X-Pan II with 40mm f4 lens on Fuji Pro400 film. This was my first roll with this borrowed camera and I found it difficult to mind-compose panoramic images before lifting the camera to my face. I suppose if you went out into nature you could capture some nice images of open spaces. Street images might be interesting too.
Stories and Images
I’ve always been drawn to stories whether they be in the form of books, movies or still images. Still images for me are just a small part of a larger story, a quick moment which is subject to interpretation or creative license (for construction of reality) due to the lack of additional context. I enjoy reading an artists own words about their work or even certain critics’ words on a work too. In art school we were told that we could only control a small part of what observers would take away from our works. Observers bring their own experiences, moods, bias to the viewing of your work so they make up their own story of what it is about. The strongest work, whether photography, drawing or painting, for me is when I stand in front of it and a rush of emotions and memories flood my mind. Examples of paintings that do this for me include the works of Mark Rothko, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenburg and Julian Schnabel but there are so many others. In photography, images take me to a different place, time or situation. Black and white photos can shroud things in shadows opening the image to further interpretation and construction.
Out on the street
I’ve always loved street photography and grew up admiring the work of Brassai, Atget, Cartier-Bresson. It wasn’t until I started using a rangefinder with 35mm lens that I felt more at ease engaging subjects on the street. Right now I’m sticking to B&W a lot to focus myself on composition and light. I like bicycles and dogs so they will show up a lot in my work. The photos above were taken in NYC last month when I was there to speak at PhotoPlus. I did a photowalk sponsored by Leica and got to test drive the wonderful M10 with Summilux 35mm f1.4.
Back to basics
This blog also starts with my turn back to basics. I have definitely been plagued by Gear Acquisition Syndrome, thinking about how to use different functions, features, which lenses to buy, rigging up for video, etc. Recently I have been fortunate to have been loaned a classic film rangefinder of German origin. It brought me back to the days when I was shooting with a Nikon FM – no autofocus, limited metering capability, no EVF or LCDs. It made me think more about making photos and liked the feeling of slowing down. The images above are quick scans of images I made with the first roll of Kodak Tri-X 400 I’ve exposed in over 27 years. I love the grain.
Photos I’d like to paint
I haven’t decided how much I like this photo, but somehow the lines breaking everything up remind me of a painting (Piet Mondrian, Richard Diebenkorn?) and I find it kind of interesting. Sometimes I take pictures of things I’d like to paint.
Photography, food, travel, life
This is the start of my new blog. Mainly this is a photography blog and I am an amateur enthusiast photographer. I enjoy photography, film, art, music, food and travel and I follow technology because that is the area in which I have worked for the last 30+ years. I have worked with wonderful teams envisioning, designing, building and bringing to market many products which I hope have made peoples’ lives easier or at least a little more fun. That work has given me the opportunity to live and work in many different countries around the world.
Despite my chosen professional path, I was educated in photography and fine art drawing and painting.
Now I have decided to do two things I have enjoyed doing from long ago but maybe have not done enough of due to the demands of work and family. At this point I think much of the content will be photographs and my thoughts on the photographs, travel, food (and drinks!) and culture which I will be making pictures of, and maybe a little technology discussion thrown in.
I shoot with everything from a smartphone to film and digital cameras. 
SteveMedinaPhotography.com 